Zastruga
by My Vantilene
Summary: One day, Wendy Corduroy woke up in a hospital bed and couldn't remember a thing. The only person left by her side was a twelve-year-old kid.


OOC ahead. You've been warned.

* * *

There's a lot of light, exploding, screaming to be acknowledged, rippling though me like rings of a pond. It's bursting and fresh, too fresh to be ripe, and threatens to overpower me with its migraine-inducing luminosity. I clamp my eyelids together as tightly as they will close and drag my hand to wipe the water from my eyes.

My hand doesn't move. I open my eyes.

One of the nurses has drawn the blinds over the window, blocking out the sun, thank God.

"You're awake!" The God-sent nurse exclaims.

I turn to my left. My arm is wrapped in heavy, white cement that offers no difference from my alabaster complexion.

So I'm injured. Doesn't look like I've seen the sun in a long time, if skin tone and zero tolerance is anything to note. Not sure what my hair or eye color is, those could probably give me clues if I'm adopted or related to the previously worried couple with their jaws down in shock and their eyes wet with tears.

The woman has salt-and-pepper hair and teal eyes, while the man has red hair and dark eyes. There's a teenager next to them, black hair and hazel eyes.

"Hiya." I greet them, then turn to the nurse, "Can I see a mirror?"

She sends a confused look towards the couple, but fetches one from the closet, oddly wary of the closet door as she does so. When she brings back the mirror I give a small smile.

I'm related to them, then. I have the man's red hair and dark eyes, and the woman's rounded nose and thin lips. The freckles are a nice surprise. Immediately, that's what I love most about me. Those freckles are so dark on my light skin, it makes me smile even wider. And that's how I discover I have dimples.

"Wendy!" the woman starts to cry harder, "You're back, I can't believe it!"

"Wendy? Wait, like the restaurant franchise? Oh my gosh, that is the lamest name. Please tell me that's not me."

"Wendy?"

"Oh, say it ain't so. Well, then, what's my last name? Please let it be something good."

"Are you feeling alright?"

"You mean besides my left arm? Yeah, peachy. Just wondering. We're Irish, aren't we? O'Reily?"

"Corduroy. Your name is Wendy Corduroy." Mr. Corduroy gives a manly sniffle before grabbing his wife's hand and charging out of the hospital room.

"What did I say?"

"Wendy?" the raven-haired teen looks at me with something like absolute horror.

"Is this because I have amnesia?"

He flips his hood up and yanks the drawstrings so hard, it covers his entire face. Then he just walks out, like Mr. and Mrs. Corduroy.

I give a long sigh and tilt my head back.

"My first day with a working memory and this is how they treat me? I'm not a bad person, am I?"

The nurse smiles omnisciently, tapping her index finger against her coral lips.

"I don't feel at liberty to say, but I think there's someone who is."

She opens the closet door, and out steps a brunette with bloodshot eyes and a glistening, wet face. He's beaming wildly, as if it's the first time someone's let him out of there.

"I'm sorry if you don't like the name Wendy, but right now, Wendy, your voice is so great to hear, you have no idea."

"He's been by your side, waiting for you to wake up for the past few months."

"Few months?"

"The doctors said you weren't going to make it at all." He says lightly, "I'm so sorry about what happened, I'll tell you that before I explain what did. See, we were hanging out in that abandoned mine shaft, it was my idea, it was my fault you got hurt I'm really—"

"Could you give us a moment alone?"

"Sure." The nurse agrees, slipping out of the room and closing the door behind her.

"I'm sorry to be asking this, but what's your name?"

"Dipper," he says, taking the hat from his head and wringing it in his hands, "Dipper Pines."

"Okay, Dipper, I've known you for all of five seconds and I can already see that you have a tell. And whatever story you just told me is completely fake. So. What really happened? And don't even try to lie to me."

"How did you —"

"It wasn't a mine," I draw slowly, "It was some sort of gorge, wasn't it?"

"You remember?" he asks hopefully.

"Sorry, kid. Only bits and pieces."

"Oh." he lowers his eyes to the ground, "Well, I don't think I can really tell you until you get your memory back."

"If I get my memory back."

"Right," he deflates, "If."

"Dude, are you crying?"

"Pfft. Tch. No."

"You spent a few months in a closet, if anyone deserves to cry, it's you."

"What about you?"

"Eh. What are memories besides things that hold you back? But…whoever I was, she must've been pretty special to you. Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize."

"And you don't have to tell me what to do, dweeb." I snap. Gosh, this kid is not going to let consoling him easy. And apparently neither am I. I give a long sigh, tilting my head back again, "Sorry. Your Wendy was probably one of those singing-to-birds chics, and I must be some massive disappointment here."

"No. You're still Wendy. And it's funny. Dweeb was the nickname she gave me too."

"Oh. Then in what way was she special to you, if she was like me?"

This kid was seriously messed up if he fell for someone like me hard enough to wait around in a closet for months.

"I…I never really had a chance to tell her, but it's because she…you…you're just so beautiful, and easy to talk to, and down to earth, and you're just a girl who _gets it_."

"And why was I never told that before?"

"Because of your boyfriend. Robbie, the guy with the black hair? I'm pretty sure he was in here when you woke up."

"I'm dating _that_?"

"I think the term you're searching for is 'him.'"

"Nuh-uh. He looked at me like I was some sort of monster, that jerk."

"He's probably just having trouble accepting the fact you can't remember anything."

"And yet here you are?"

"I guess."

"How many days of school did you miss for me, dweeb?"

"Um, heh." He scratched the back of his neck, "All…of them."

"What."

He is not serious.

He can't be.

"Well, I actually live in southern California. We're in, uh…we're in Oregon right now. I was visiting for the summer, and that's when I met you. You had your accident a few weeks before I was supposed to leave, and, you know, go back to school but I —"

"Dweeb!" I yell, picking up the nearest object my right hand can reach and throwing it at him. He dodges with accuracy I would not except from a twelve-year-old, closet-confined boy, "What fu — heck were you thinking?! Does your family know you're here?"

"Well, no, but —"

"Then what are you doing, staying here, go back to your family!" I throw more things from the bed stand, flowers, gift baskets, magazines, books, a thing of chocolates, one right after the other until he fled the room. The nurse comes back, bewildered.

"You know he'll be back."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Then he'll have to tell me what happened. But maybe now he'll at least call his family. Probably has his mother worried sick."

The nurse frowns omnisciently.

"Yes, probably."


End file.
